Narrowing the path of Virtual Reality The VR Expert Series with Steven Swanson ( Luma Pictures )
In our Virtual Reality Expert Series we bring you in this ninth episode the expert view by Steven Swanson and Co-Owner of Luma Pictures ( US )
Luma is a world-class creative studio that provides an exceptional range of services for the film, advertising, and tech industries. Through nearly 100 feature films, numerous commercials, animated content, and the incubation and acceleration of startups and technological products, partners in all spheres of entertainment and technology rely on Luma to collaborate on their most complex and creative challenges.
Credits include Hollywood blockbusters such as Doctor Strange, Deadpool, Prometheus, Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: The Dark World; as well as award-winning live-action films including Prisoners, True Grit, No Country for Old Men and Crash.
Steven is a creative producer and entrepreneur with more than 15 years experience generating world class VFX on over 100 features and commercials including 15+ Marvel properties.
As getting insights from VR experts within the sector is essential, we asked Steven for his view on the VR Future, especially in the event domain, and this after the interview with Torsten Hoffman, Co-Founder of the Virtual Reality Content Group, Pieter Van Leugenhagen, Co-Founder of Yondr, Kim Schaefer, Managing partner at Reality Matters Hugo King-Fretts from Tui , Laura Hall from the VR/AR Association, Tim Woensdregt from Relativity VR and Jasper Steenkamp, Ward Van Ooteghem from InAnyEvent . All one by one experts in the fast growing VR world.
Marc: Tell us more about your company and how the company entered the VR market
Steven: Luma is one of the largest privately owned visual effects studios in the world and we began creating VR in the fall of 2015 starting with two 360° experiences for Infiniti which were full CG pre-rendered stereo as well as two spots for Multiple Sclerosis Society which were stitched 360° video.
Marc: What best VR business cases for entertainment have you seen in the last years ?
Steven: It’s too early to define “best" use cases but currently a majority of funding has been coming from advertising/marketing into 360° content. I think one of the key catalysts for VR adoption will be Location Based VR Arcades since high end headsets are expensive and require a good bit of technical savvy. We’ll also start seeing more ad-supported VR content as ad-delivery systems are integrated into content creation tools.
Marc : What added value does VR give for the Entertainment market?
Steven: While VR borrows from every other form of entertainment, its an entirely new medium in its own right and because its still in the early adopter phase, its cultural and financial and cultural value are a work in progress.
As VR matures it will be more engaging and satisfying than any other format. Whereas stories, plays and books are generally 3rd person and retroactive, VR – similar to games – excels at providing experiences in the 1st person, happening right 'now', and therefore has the potential to make a deeper emotional impact.
All entertainment relies on an audience's suspension of disbelief – temporarily buying into the pretence that dragons exist or that we're on another planet. It's much easier to persuade audiences to suspend their disbelief in VR because its immersive and by way of example is a reason why horror experiences work really well in VR.
Marc : Many VR applications are only 360°. The future of VR requires interaction while users are wearing their glasses. How do you see this work in the entertainment world?
Steven: Passive and interactive VR will co-exist. Movies, TV and, theatre are passive forms of entertainment and we still love them. Interactive is more complicated to create both philosophically and technically but like anything else, if done well, audiences will reward the creators.
On a related note, I think 360° and 180° content will also co-exist. Some experiences justifiably make use of a full 360° canvas while others are perfectly fine focusing attention straight ahead with the added benefit of immersion achieved by a wider field of view.
While most 360° VR content is linear and viewed passively I’m seeing more experimentation to make 360° interactive by splicing in footage triggered by what you’re looking at and for how long.
Light field and volumetric capture will be a game changer for capture based VR° in that the 6 degrees of freedom (6DOF) it offers translates to a degree of presence that non-lightfield 360° can’t achieve.
Marc : The market is critical that VR could have the same hype as 3D TV, that never really work. Why is VR different and why do you think it will be there to stay?
Steven: Stereo TV was, in my opinion, a relatively negligible improvement. I don’t recall anyone’s face lighting up when they first tried it unlike VR. The insane level of enthusiasm I see in both creators and consumers combined with the financial potential as a new computing and entertainment paradigm make the success of VR/AR/MR, in my opinion, inevitable. But I'm drinking the Kool-aid as they say :)
Marc : Is VR going to play an important role in the future of entertainment?
Steven: VR will change every facet of the human experience. Relationships, commerce, collaboration, entertainment. VR also presents deep sociological and philosophical quandaries about what it means to be human, fulfilled, attribute value, productive, happy. The potential of VR will unfold across decades and generations.
Marc : Do you see also a role for AR and Holographic in the short term entertainment market?
Steven: The consumer base for AR entertainment currently lags VR so near term I’d lean towards no. The hardware and app development costs for Hololens, Meta, Magic Leap and Daqri make more sense for enterprise than entertainment at the moment.
Because of their reach, when Apple (inevitably) releases AR capable hardware I think that will turn the tide and simulate more AR entertainment development. Generally, affordability fosters adoption which in turn attracts content developers and those 2 forces feed off each other.
Marc : When you look at the global entertainment brands, who is leading the AR activities and who the VR activities?
Steven: Sony packs a one-two punch in VR with its PSVR hardware coupled with its catalogue of film properties and game industry affiliations. Similarly, Valve with its Steam platform and partnership with HTC is heavily vested in creating exceptional VR content. All the major film studios are increasingly experimenting with VR as well and we’ll start seeing more compelling 360° and game engine driven content in the coming year.
More broadly than just entertainment, Microsoft seems to be leading the pack in both AR/VR with Hololens, Windows 10 VR headset and Xbox Project Scorpio. Couple that with their many investments and partnerships including AutoDesk for engineering and design applications and Intel on Project Alloy and I believe we’ll see some very interesting developments within the next 1-2 years.
Marc : Where do you see the future of entertainment going to?
Steven: While the big studios and publishers will continue to create the most ambitious AAA entertainment, there is a gold rush of content coming from the indie community. The falling cost of technology lowers the barrier to entry for content creators and although there will be a deluge of low quality entertainment, there will be some breakout successes just as we’ve seen within the SaaS (e.g. Slack, Dropbox etc) and mobile apps (e.g. Angry Birds, Uber). The cream always rises to the top.
Marc : Do you have exciting news about your company and 2017?
Steven: Nothing that I can talk about at the moment ;)
Marc : Thank you for your views on this exciting VR market Steven. We encourage readers to reach out to Steven and his team and learn more on how VR brings Entertainment and Automotive in another dimension .
Marc Van Steyvoort
About
Steven Swanson
VR Connoisseur and Senior VFX Producer
Linkedin : https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/stevenswanson/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/neojipc
Marc Van Steyvoort
Content and Media entrepreneur and writer
Linkedin : https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/youngdiamonds/
eMail : [email protected]
April 10, 2017, All rights reserved ?